


Momvellan Tribute Ficlet

by ChocolateChipFic (Leigh_B)



Series: Momvellan and Papa!Franken!Solas [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: AU of an AU of an AU, Clever Baby, Dragon Age AU, Enchantments, Fic of Feynite's Fic, Fluff, For Feynite, Franken!Solas is mostly just mentioned, Gearing up for an additional fic, I don't know how this happened, Mother and Child, Mother and Child fluff, Mother bonding with Child, Multiple Universes glued together by the Fade, Multiverse, The Fade, This was supposed to be something totally different, accidental fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 10:18:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6419863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leigh_B/pseuds/ChocolateChipFic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a set up for a series of ficlets that I intend to write inspired by the literary goddess Feynite. I really wanted to write some fluffy business for the tragic and disconcerting figure of Franken!Solas. He will appear in the next installment. This features my Halani Lavellan doing mom things, though the Lavellan is left as an ambiguous female in this specific piece. I decided that it could be published all by its lonesome. The additional pieces will all be independent publications alongside it posted under my cookie monger account!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Momvellan Tribute Ficlet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Feynite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feynite/gifts).



The sky gave a thunderous roar outside of the gaping stone doorway. The child jerked. Her sudden fear cut through the coagulation of determination and hurt that hung about her. Quick as bolts, her eyes darted toward the entrance to the ruins: searched the falling sheets of rain with an aimless fervor.

Guilt thrashed against Lavellan’s breastbone, aching like a bruise. She didn’t allow the emotion to creep out of her skin. The girl was already upset as things were. The last thing that the child needed was to taste the flavor of pity in the air. This in mind, Lavellan did not bother to constrain the renewed abundance of concern and fondness that rushed from her toward the girl. The woman curled her emotions around the child’s body as an embrace of sorts. Lavellan was still unsure how much physical affection the child was comfortable accepting from her. She was also unsure of the meanings the girl might gather from tactile interactions between the two of them. Her fingers itched to brush her cheek. Tug a curl. Smooth the line of worry out of her brow with a push from her index finger, then twitch the tip of a pointed little ear as she playfully smiled the girl’s fear away.

She didn’t pursue these actions, however, merely thought of them as she approached the child. Idly drawing inspiration from the chill nipping through her wet clothes, Lavellan infused winter magic into the matrix of a barrier she cast across the doorway. She knelt in front of the girl with a measured languidness in her movements, casually waving an arm to set her spell to manifesting. Rather than concentrate on their keen interest in one another’s nearness, both elves pretended to focus on the writhing tendrils of magic. Tentative spindles strained toward one another like desperate skeletal fingers. They eagerly knit together to form a translucent surface over the towering, dilapidated doorway. Lavellan slowed the spell’s formation, taking care to will the barrier into a semipermeable seal that would allow the child and herself to pass through without incident, but would keep predators, thieves, and the weather at bay.

Frosted blue light curved as a halo into the dark interior of the abandoned manor around them. Furious raindrops beat against the barrier’s face, freezing the moment of impact and falling to the ground as icy little pebbles. Each drop spurred a shell of ripples to echo across the magic. The _clink_ of the ice pebbles against the stone bridge below melded with the sounds of the pounding rain and howling winds. The cacophony of elements resounded within each of the barrier’s undulations. The whole of the sensation was dulled beneath the seal of Lavellan’s spell, and the beautiful aspects of such a strong storm could again be appreciated now that she and the child were sheltered properly. The two continued to admire the simple spell for another handful of moments, surprised by the intensity of its illumination and the weather’s affect.

They needed dry clothes and bedding. They needed a fire. And they needed to finish talking.

“Da’len?”

That same determined look set about the child’s jaw, her lips pouting slightly as she turned toward Lavellan. Their eyes met, and an edge that was far too sharp and much too bitter to be found in someone her age surfaced in the girl’s stare. It pierced the woman's gaze, and she swallowed thickly. 

“I need you to understand that there were many reasons that led me to leave the clan. Their insistence on shunning you into the wilds was a catalyst to my departure, but not the one and only reason.”

The girl remained silent.

Lavellan sighed, lowering her eyes from the child's compelling expression. She lifted her hand, hoping to convey her intentions without offering false hope toward the girl’s mysterious goal. The woman grabbed the child’s chin, the curve of her thumb tucking neatly into the dimple at the center.

“I will care for you while you are here, certainly. You will not be left cold and hungry. However,” Lavellan said, giving the little chin in her grasp a gentle squeeze. “I am not yet convinced to accompany you to whichever side of the Fade it is that you endeavor to court me toward.”

“But you aren’t refusing,” the child spoke suddenly, loudly.

The girl forced her chapped lips to stretch into a grin. The expression was an attempt to portray confidence that Lavellan knew she did not feel. It was the first thing that the girl had said in nearly four hours, a remarkable amount of time to be silent for this little one, and Lavellan did not want to discourage further communication. The woman locked away any measure of pity and anxiety within herself. It became a tight ball, writhing beneath her ribs.  

Lavellan let her head lull to one side, lessening the intensity of her own look and flitting her gaze across the girl’s features. Unruly hair. Round little nose. Freckles. Canine teeth growing in, shark like, on top of the milk teeth clinging below.

“I am not refusing,” Lavellan assented. “But neither am I agreeing. And my leaving the clan to winter in the woods with you was not a vote in either direction.”     

A fierce nod was her only reply, victory and hope erupting from the girl in a wave that was so potent, it was violent. Lavellan withdrew her hand, stunned, and blinked a few moments at the true smirk that stretched over the girl’s face.

That settled, or as settled as Lavellan imagined it could be, she rose and began to search through the remains of the decrepit dwelling around them. It had obviously been the home of some noble or another, abandoned in the wilderness when the trend of visiting untamed provincial wilds wilted beneath the heat of some other ostentatious display of wealth. Whatever parts of society had crafted this stone behemoth, she was grateful that they were frivolous enough to leave behind some pieces of furniture, necessary day to day objects, and many items that, with a good washing, would make for excellent bedding.

The girl stayed close by, aware of the proper behavior for accompanying a hunter’s prowl after a month or so of trailing after Lavellan through the clan. The two were silent: elvhen shadows lurking through the decayed rooms and scavenging whatever was dry enough to be firewood or somehow salvageable as a tool. The building was filled with cracked walls and split ceilings. Most of the rooms on the upper levels and toward the west of the house were completely open to the elements and home to all manner of wildlife. Lavellan and the girl came across at least a dozen giant spiders, a mother fox with a set of kits born out of season, and an entire flock of crows. The crows and fox were welcome to stay, but the spiders were slain on sight.

Lavellan realized rather quickly that the simplest thing to do would be to section of the livable portion of the ruin for upkeep and safety. That task was too monumental to tackle without a moment of rest, however, and so they returned to the gatehouse over the stone bridge. After their spoils were sorted, Lavellan summoned up a roaring fire and doled out some of the traveling portions that she’d taken from the clan’s stores. Before they tucked into the food, Lavellan removed a set of dry clothing for each of them from her oilskin pack. When the meal was through, she noticed the child nodding off and set about building her a nest made of the cleanest bedding that she could scrape together. The girl was asleep within a quarter of an hour. Their journey to this place had been a long one, and the weather had been truly frightful for the duration of their travel.

It had been obvious during the earlier scavenging that the whole of the western portion, consisting of the solar, servant’s quarters, and what Lavellan assumed had once been a great library, was the section that had seen the worst damage. It took several hours and a few small naps, but Lavellan managed to stitch up the seams in the eastern part of the home. A robust gatehouse, the great hall, and the kitchens, as well as the buttery and parts of the deeper storage rooms, were now rendered habitable through more reinforced barriers and a few well-placed wards. Lavellan felt extremely accomplished and optimistic about their chances of surviving the winter when her work was finished. She hauled her exhausted body back toward the gatehouse where the child slept just as dawn began to peek over the horizon. Later in the morning, she would wake the girl and begin to scout for game, weather permitting.

\---

As middle autumn stretched into early winter, the two gathered, hunted, smoked, dried, and stockpiled various forms of food and entertainment to see them through the cold months. It was not until the season’s first heavy blizzard that Lavellan allowed herself time to deeply reflect on her relationship to the girl. Her earliest assumptions, wild as they may have seemed, had been confirmed by the child before the clan had shunned them.

This girl was the daughter of some distant version of herself.

She could accept that.

The Dalish had stories of realities parallel to their own. Magic was capable of accomplishing truly remarkable feats. She’d managed to strain a few pieces of vague information out of the girl, sketching a fuller picture of the circumstances in her own mind.

The version of herself that had birthed this girl was older, politically powerful, and betrayed by her lover: dead through the trials of her situation if not a more overt from of assassination. An explanation for her mother’s death had never been offered. The girl had been raised in the clutches of some oppressive organization that centered their philosophy on bizarre religious zealotry.

It was all very tragic.

This child wished for a mother. Well, more specifically _her_ mother. So, as any extremely magically gifted individual might, she had gone about finding some alternate version of her. It was her mission to convince this alternate version to forsake her own reality and away with this child and the lover: an absent father whom had later saved her from the organization. 

All of this Lavellan could accept.

But why her? If there were innumerable versions of the mother in existence, why was she the version that had been sought out? She did not consider herself to be exceptionally affectionate or forgiving. Children were enjoyable at a distance, in her experience. They had always seemed terribly intimidating when she’d considered baring and raising them herself.

Why was she the version that the child wanted? 

These thoughts gnawing at her, the woman’s fondness for the girl seemed to double on a daily basis regardless of her apprehension. The growing attachment wearied away her stubborn opinion of the burden which was motherhood. Somehow, small smiles, sweet words, and joyful glances balanced the more frequent occurrences of frustration and fatigue. The woman felt full to bursting with affection each night when they lay down to sleep, and yet the morning would stuff another full course of care down her gullet. She was young to truly contemplate motherhood, but every time the girl’s big blue eyes shone with laughter, every time she flashed her toothy grin, a wave of warmth lunged through the woman.

Lavellan felt that she really had no business raising a child, certainly not a child that was capable of interdimensional travel. Even so, she seriously began to consider relenting to the girl’s endeavor. She _could_ be her mother. It would be clumsy. There would be pitfalls. She would be submitting to living life at her wit’s end…

 But she would be happy, loving and caring for this child who was her own and not.

It was the lover that still gave her pause.

It hadn’t been said. They’d barely acknowledged it. The details were too hazy for her to be entirely sure, but everything pointed toward the Dread Wolf as the sire of this incredible child. It was nightmarish to consider. A true horror spit toward girls who would be loose with their affections. A curse put upon a mother who was secretive with the identity of a child’s father. To be fathered by such a one was perhaps the most tragic thing that could have befallen this child.

The girl was aware of Lavellan’s suspicions about her father’s identity. She also seemed to know that she’d already wooed the woman into accepting the daunting role motherhood. Now that they were done with their rushed and physically grueling preparations for winter, the child less than subtly went about warming Lavellan’s heart toward this anonymous man.

A few days after they’d been snowed in, the girl’s sluggish boredom was shelved in the wake of an idea. She asked to teach Lavellan a peculiar cross between meditation and exercise that involved contorting one’s body into strange positions and then holding them that way for an excessive amount of time. She agreed to partake of these exercises every morning because the girl took on an odd, rhythmical cadence while coaching them through their routine.

It was one of the most precious things that she’d ever heard, though she assumed the girl was mimicking her father’s tone. This put a touch of ice on the warmth she related to the sound. Her suspicions were confirmed one morning when, half-way through one of the warm-up stretches, the girl began to chat.

“You know,” she began. “My papa and I would do this every morning.”

Lavellan slowly quirked a brow. “Oh?”

“Mm-hmm.”

A few moments of silence passed. The girl was clearly waiting for the woman to prompt more from her. When she did not, the girl huffed and instructed them to move into the next position.

“He is very advanced in this practice. Some of the forms he can take are incredibly complicated and very physically challenging.”

“Hm.”

It was not a lack of interest that kept Lavellan quiet. This child talked most when pressed by her own mind. She lost track of how much she shared while trying to bait her conversational partner to engage in a deeper fashion. The less Lavellan said, the more she would learn.

“There was this once…” the girl trailed off, leaving space for either encouragement or admonition.

Lavellan offered neither.

“I was sad. I didn’t really know why I was so sad, I just was. We’d been doing our exercises in the morning for a few weeks then, and I didn’t want to do them that day. Papa wasn’t going to make me, but he wanted me to still go with him to this waterfall place. We always do our exercises there, because it’s really pretty and peaceful. Papa does most of his meditating there too.”

The girl took a deep breath, sliding into the next stretch.  

“I guess he thought that I would brighten up by the time that we got to the waterfall. I didn’t. So,” she paused, chortling a bit to herself. “Instead of asking me what was wrong, Papa changed his shape. He went through all of the _whole_  routine in an animal shape to make me laugh. It was really silly. But see, it was _especially_ silly because Papa’s kind of silly isn’t like… the loud goofy silly. You know, like...”

The girl made a face and tugged her ears into an odd shape to indicate the inferior, average, “lowbrow” sort of silly before carrying on. 

“He’s super droll about everything. So he just,” she snickered, shrugging her sharp little shoulder. “Turned into a great big wolf and imitated all of our stretches in a shape that wasn’t meant to do them _at all_. Ha! And he didn’t say one word about it. He just went through the routine as if it was the most normal thing in the whole world.”

“A wolf?” Lavellan’s question sucked the child’s reminiscent amusement from the air. A tense insecurity replaced it.

Not much of a surprise there. She’d pieced it together long ago. All the same, a tremor tore through Lavellan. Haunting old metaphors and cautionary tales whispered in the shadows of her mind. 

 The little one took some deep, calming breaths. “Yeah.”

The woman stared at the child. The girl’s position remained unbroken, and she was not looking toward Lavellan in order to gauge her reaction. Instead the child focused acutely on the woman’s emotions, pawing at Lavellan with intense curiosity.

“I bet that was very silly to see, indeed, Da’len," Lavellan offered. 

The woman punctuated her statement by exuding a mild sense of amusement and a large dose of assurance, punching down the petulant rush of fear. They stumbled through a few more revealing conversations over the next few weeks. All were prompted by the girl. Lavellan’s knee-jerk revulsion dimmed slowly with prolonged exposure to the topic of the Dread Wolf.

The version of the lover that was her “papa” was not the one who’d sired her. He’d found her. He was also not entirely himself? It hadn’t made a lot of sense when the girl had spoken of it. She’d said the words in a strangled whisper, almost as though her father was listening and would consider them hurtful.

Lavellan found that notion to be… most unpleasant.

It wasn’t until they’d spent nearly a month pent up in the habitable portions of the manor that Lavellan fully participated in a dialogue about the girl’s papa. It was one of the colder nights that the year had given them. The fire had died down an hour before, but the ambient warmth still lingered in the bedchamber that had become of the old gatehouse. Lavellan debated stoking the flames, but found that she and the child were rather toasty in the plush nest of bedding that they shared.

The girl lounged in the woman’s lap. They were facing one another. Her back was propped against Lavellan’s lanky legs, the woman anchored into position with her feet partially up a wall. Low embers were outshined by the pale glow emanating from the barrier Lavellan had thrown up before. The cool light spilled across the child’s features, emphasizing the similarities and differences between their faces.

The child was gorgeous.

Her hair, textured in the wild curls prone to knotting that Lavellan had growing from her own head, was an interesting gingery brown. It slanted toward a darker brunette, rather than a medium sandy color. Her eyes were wide and bright, their shape also taking after Lavellan. Her lips were a bit like hers too. Her brow. Her ears. Most defiantly her nose.

The girl’s coloration, however, was far from her own. Not just in the hair. Her skin was delicate. It was so pale that, in some places, the intricate network of blue veins pulsed through as though the skin had become translucent when stretched over wide structures like her clavicle and the spread of her little feet. She was freckled too, sweet thing. Precious honeyed dots beaded over her cheeks, nose, and shoulders. A handful scattered over her chin and forehead, but their saturation was weak when compared to their brethren busy fastening a pixie saddle over the bridge of the girl’s nose.

Much of her base structure was unlike Lavellan. It had more of an edge. It was more refined. Her cheeks, round despite the girl’s struggle with illness from the cold weather, possessed an angle that would become a feature of statuesque beauty when she finished growing.

Oh! And her chin! That wonderful little dimple in the center set off a matched set that peeked out of her cheeks when she smiled.

Her slim little fingers were uncommonly long and dexterous. Her wrists and ankles were slender works of art. They rolled with an innate, poised grace. Though she knew that these features had not been offered through her lineage, observing them gave Lavellan a curious sense of pride.

Her child was _gorgeous_.

It was difficult to manage, for some reason, piecing together an image of the Dread Wolf in her mind’s eye. He must be handsome. Or, at least, he’d better be. If any version of herself risked so much to be with him, to make this wonderful child with him, he had better be a man of astonishing appeal. And smart. Not just clever, but intelligent. And patient. And kind. And skilled. And… and….

She just couldn’t imagine it. Could not fathom herself falling in love (or into bed), knowingly or not, with the Betrayer of the People. Could not, for the life of her, think of a series of events that could lead her to loving a man who would be a God. An evil God, at that.

She shifted.

Perhaps “evil _”_ was not the right term…

AND THERE IT WAS.

 Lavellan felt herself go agog. She didn’t keep all of the sudden emotion out of the air, and the girl knit her brow together in worry. The child, fortunately, didn’t press.

 It did exist. It was there. A part of her that might allow it. Might allow one such as him to illustrate his side of things, convince her of his morality. A part of her that might hear him out, and enjoy listening to his odd, lilting cadence as he merrily took her for a fool. It existed, and she was upset by this.

The girl waited patiently as Lavellan distracted herself by brushing at the child’s soft cheeks and hair. Tactile affection had inevitably developed between them during their months of work and lone companionship. Lavellan had consented to the child calling her “Mamae.”

What could be the harm in cuddling after that?

The woman veered away from her mounting emotional distress by trying to picture the Dread Wolf. She found no cohesion for the image. Did Fen’Harel honestly have gingery-brown curls with a dimple in his chin? Was he freckled and pale? Was there that same shine that she so enjoyed seeing in the child’s eyes when he laughed? Did he chuckle and occasionally snort the way that the girl did?

What was his, and what was hers, and what was unique to the girl?

“Your papa,” Lavellan ventured. The girl’s eyes lit up. It was the first time Lavellan had ever brought him forward into conversation. “What does he look like?”

 “Papa is very handsome!” the child beamed. “I’m not too sure what makes him handsome, but he is. And it’s not just because he’s my papa. He is just very handsome.”

Hm. Better be more specific.

“Is his hair like yours?”

“No… or yes… at least,” she stalled a moment, tugging a curl in front of her face to glare at it intently. “His eyebrows are the same color. I don’t think it’s curly, because he's even worse at helping me untangle my hair than the Chantry sisters were. I don’t really know, though. He shaves his head bald.”

Lavellan blinked. An overly masculinized, bald rendering of the girl flashed though the woman’s mind before she could contain herself. For some odd reason, he was still the size of an eight year old child. It was extremely bizarre, and Lavellan suppressed the disturbing notion as quickly as she could manage.

“Does he look much like you, or do you look more like me?” Lavellan asked, running the tip of her index finger down the bridge of the girl’s nose. “Your nose is certainly mine.”

The girl laughed weakly. “It took all the luck I ever had not to get his nose, I’m pretty sure.”

The image of a wolf’s muzzle prodded at Lavellan. It pasted itself onto the odd amalgamation of elf that she’d thrown together in her imagination. It was an unappealing visage.

The conversation halted. The air around them was muddled beneath the woman’s intense curiosity, and so she missed the initial signs of the girl’s distress. It wasn’t until her own inquisitive air was overwhelmed by a careening storm of affection and heartache that she realized something was horribly wrong.

The girl swallowed thickly, and her voice was croaky when she spoke again. “Papa always says that I was gifted the very best from both of you. He says,” tears rose in her eyes, “that two elves could never make a more beautiful child. He says that I… he says….”

The child dissolved into a fit of sobs. She flew forward and hid herself against Lavellan’s chest, breaking open a cask of pain that had long been buried beneath her fragile, delicate skin.

“I miss him, Mamae!” she bawled. “I miss him terribly!”  

She wept for a good while. Her words drifted in and out of coherency as her chest thrashed with the might her grief. It was enough for Lavellan to gather the knowledge that her father was _not_ watching them. In fact, she had snuck away after stealing into his spell books and enchanting an amulet that would keep her from entering the Fade as she slept. He couldn’t trace her that way. Couldn’t stop her from finding a mama who would come back to be with them. She’d left him a note to explain her whole plan and promise that she would be careful and safe. It was a very long note.

She cried harder after whispering that she’d known the note would not be enough.  

When her tears had ebbed, the girl was shaking. Inhalations that were ghosts of sobs kept her on the edge of consciousness. In this wounded, delirious state, desperate words tumbled out of the child’s mouth. “I miss him _so_ much. Could we go back now, Mamae? Have I made you want to come with us yet?”

Lavellan’s own emotions had churned into a slur of pity and visceral reactionary sorrow. She did not know what to say to the girl, and so continued to caress her with soothing emotional touches as well as gentle scratching up and down her back. The child soon slipped into a fitful doze. Tears had gathered and cooled in the corners of Lavellan’s eyes. It hadn’t felt right to let them fall. She needed to stay in control. She was the adult. She was the one who was meant to comfort her distressed child, not weep alongside her in a tumult of confusion and worry.

How had she not suspected this? How could she have never considered the strain that this girl was under? It was wrong. All of it was wrong. The child’s declining health made much more sense. Of course she was out of it, she hadn’t had a proper sleep in nearly six months!

Lavellan felt gutted out, her insides brutalized at the hands of inexperience. She was doing poorly with motherhood thus far. She needed help, but there was no clan now. No hahren to offer wisdom. No mother or grandmother to coach her through. She didn’t even have a friend to accompany her in distress, nor a hiding place to release her own guilt and anxiety.

She was here, alone in the wilderness, with this child who called her Mamae, and she needed help. It was embarrassing to consider: tapping out after only one good crying fit. But this was not a normal cry. This child was not heartbroken over a lost toy or a rude comment. Lavellan had attempted to measure the intensity of the child’s pain by sifting through the emotions she projected. She’d coaxed an inconceivable amount of depth out amongst the sobs and confessions. It was raw and heavy. Too heavy. It was an absolute nightmare to consider how long the girl had bottled up such poisonous hurt.

Much more of a nightmare than any ginger-headed man with freckles and a dimple could ever be.

It wasn’t half a thought later. She was reaching to remove the necklace before she considered the ramifications. Her fingers paused, an inch from the cord, trembling. What if he couldn’t find her on this side of the Fade? What if he’d stopped searching? What was to happen if he didn’t come at all?

What should happen if he did?

The amulet was a plain thing. Lavellan had never suspected that it held any sort of enchantment, much less a spell powerful enough to block its wearer’s entrance into the Fade. It was hung around the girl’s neck with twine, threadbare and graying. It was a simple little green crystal. Chrysoprase, if she had to guess. Lavellan ran her fingers over the sleeping child’s back a few more times, trying to work back up to her earlier haste.

To attempt summoning him wasn’t promising to depart with them, nor was her interest in the child offering an interest in him. He could come, and be here, and help them through the winter. When spring came, she would make her choice. When the snows melted into rain, and green shoots accompanied the song of newly hatched birds, she would decide whether or not to remain in the role of motherhood and cohabitate alongside… not going to dwell on him.

She would make the choice in spring.

Lavellan pinched the cord between thumb and forefinger. The magic began to thrum against her flesh as she sought it out with her will. She rolled the material between her fingers, summoning a touch of flame to separate the threads. It snapped, the remnants of the enchantment dispersing with a raspy wheeze.

A minute.

Two minutes.

Ten minutes.

It was near instantaneously that the child slid fully into the Fade. Lavellan could feel it in the laxness of her muscles, sense it in the departure of the child’s presence. How long would it take? How long _should_ it take?

 

**Author's Note:**

> Feynite, you are an incredible and inspirational author. I hadn't written anything that I was proud of in a very long time before I began to read your fics a while back. After I did, I was inspired to pursue all of my creative endeavors anew, and I am so grateful for your warm and friendly approach to us hordes of fans. If you actually read this, I will be SO honored.


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